I've seen this on an informational page I have been testing for something else over the past few weeks and haven't really seen too much discussion on it. (thanks for starting it) Most of the content on the page is just a tabular list of information, in this case without any links out.

The page contains a meta description and NOODP. Google is also ignoring the text content at the top of the page.

I think what Google is really trying to do here is to provide a little more inside information as to what's on the page to allow the user to make their click choice more relevant. I think if you can get over the eye-strain, they have actually done that in some cases. But, I think overall it's too cluttered and hopefully a beta test that will be improved or eliminated in the future.